Mandalay is Myanmar’s second largest city and one of its former capitals. Nestled along the Irrawaddy River, the city has much to see in and around the area.
Within the city the two main attractions are the Royal Palace and Mandalay Hill. The Royal Palace sits at the center of a large square compound in the city that is protected by a wall and moat. There are theoretically four entrances into the compound at the center of each side but all but one, the eastern entrance are closed to foreigners. It is possible to reach the entrance by foot but will take some time to walk there as the sides are roughly 2 km long. Once you reach the correct gate you must pay a fee for an Archaeology Zone Pass that will run you 10,000 Kyat. This pass will get you access to the Royal Palace, Kuthodaw Pagoda, Shwenandaw Monestary and adjacent buddhist hall as well as a few other sites in the towns of Inwa and Amarapura that are outside the city. The Royal Palace gives a glimpse into the past when the country was ruled by a king and queen before British colonization and take over control. At the very back of the grounds there is a small museum in a building with regalia worn by past royalty as well as paintings and tapestries. Tourists are only permitted on the road leading up to the palace as well as the palace grounds itself. All other areas of the compound are off limits.
Mandalay Hill rises 750ft out of the very flat area that is Mandalay. A Buddhist temple has been built at the top. A popular thing to do is make your way to the up and watch the sun set over the mountains in the distance while gazing over the whole city. To get to the top you can either pay one of the numerous trucks which pile people into the back and haul them up for 1000 Kyat a person, pay a motorcycle taxi to take you (not sure on the price) or just walk up the road yourself. We chose to walk it ourselves. It wasn’t too tough of climb and took us just under 30 minutes to reach the parking area where everyone gets dropped off. From there you can walk up the remaining steps or take an escalator. We chose the latter after our nice climb up the hill. Once at the top you have to pay a 1000 Kyat entrance fee (unfortunately the Archaeology Zone Pass doesn’t cover here). The view gives almost an entire 360 degree perspective of the area.
A popular half day trip from Mandalay is to take a boat up to Mingun and check out Mingun Pahtodawgyi, a giant Buddhist temple that has been cracked from an earthquake in 1839. Boats leave from the jetty at around 9am and tickets can be bought the morning of so just show up. Cost for a return ticket is 5000 Kyat. The boat ride takes about one hour to putter upstream to the temple. There is an entrance fee to visit this area (again the Archaeology Zone Pass doesn’t apply here) which is 5000 Kyat and includes the neighboring Myatheindan Pagoda. The temple is fairly large and made completely out of bricks. Even though there are giant cracks running down some of the sides you can still climb some stairs up to the top and take in the view of the river and surrounding area. Exploring the whole top does involve traversing some gaps created from the earthquake so be careful especially because you must be barefoot. You are given a couple hours to explore the temple and surrounding attractions before reconvening back at the boat for the journey back to Mandalay. The trip back is a bit shorter at 40 minutes because you’re going down stream and will arrive back in Mandalay around 1:00pm.
Another popular tourist attraction is to catch a ride south of the town to Amarapura and see U Thein Bridge. This is the world’s oldest and longest teakwood bridge and crosses Taungthaman Lake. To get there and back, you can hire a motorcycle taxi to take you which will cost you 10000 Kyat for two people. It lies about 7 miles south of the city and takes around 20 minutes to get there. There are tons of people here, tourists and locals alike. The bridge can get pretty crowded because of this and there are no handrails so take caution. We decided to head down there in the late afternoon to catch the sunset. About halfway across the bridge you can take some stairs down to a few restaurants that have set up tables to watch the sunset (you must buy something to sit at these). In addition there are also locals that will take you out on a boat either during the day or during sunset. As the sun starts to go down the crowds on the bridge subside allowing for easier passageway. In the waters all around the bridge are fishermen either using nets or fishing rods to catch what they can.
One cool thing that we did was walk through town from 35th street back up to our hotel at 23rd street. Along our walk we stumbled upon the day to day commerce of the city. People everywhere selling produce, fruit and other staples of life either out of shops, on the street or from carts. This felt like the heart of the city and was an amazing thing to come across.
The tourist population isn’t very big in Mandalay. Aside from the tourist attractions we hardly saw any other tourists while walking around the city. Accommodations in the city are fairly limited especially in the budget range. We stayed at the Nylon Hotel west of the Royal Palace. The cost was $15 a night including breakfast. We had a rooftop room on the 5th floor which had a nice patio area overlooking the city. One thing to note about Myanmar accommodations is that they quote you the price in US dollars. When we tried to pay in their local currency they were taken aback and weren’t ready with that price so they had to do the conversion. We found this to be true of everywhere we stayed in Myanmar so my advice is to bring pristine US 100s for currency exchange and regular 20s, 10s and 5s to pay your hotel bills with maybe even some 1s as well. They didn’t seem to critical of the condition of the bills the couple times we used US dollars to pay for our accommodation.
There aren’t as many restaurants around town as compared to other places we’ve travelled. They do exist but you need to search them out. There are more food stalls around town which seem to be more popular than restaurants. The ones we found served either local dishes or Indian cuisine. Beer stations are also a good place to eat at as they serve noodle and rice dishes You can find these by searching out places with big beer signs and logos around the building, either Myanmar, Mandalay or Dagon are the typical beer sponsors. Draft beers are sold here for 700 Kyat.
It is possible to walk around the city but it takes time, instead you could rent a bicycle to get around quicker.
Mandalay is definitely a different atmosphere from other cities in the Southeast Asia region. Minimal construction is underway which is nice compared to everywhere else where it seems like endless construction is happening. The city isn’t tainted by tourists and lacks the towering buildings that most large cities have. This probably will change in the upcoming years so my advice is to check it out before that happens.
Embrace the Odyssey 